Parents warn about the dangers of ‘salt and ice’ challenge

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Parents warn about the dangers of ‘salt and ice’ challenge

MARYSVILLE – Parents in Snohomish County are putting out a warning about a ‘game’ that kids are daring each other to play. It’s called the ‘salt and ice challenge.’

Jason Erickson says his 13 year old daughter and her friends are good kids. But a couple weeks ago, those good kids got a bad idea. They decided to take what’s known as the ‘salt and ice challenge.’

“It’s where you put salt on ice and stick it on your hand or somewhere on your body,” says 13 year old Jenaea Brunson. “Whoever holds it on longest wins.”

“I didn’t really think it would hurt,” adds 14 year old Skyler Duran.

But if you take a look at some of the videos on YouTube, you can see that mixing salt and ice and putting that directly on your skin can hurt.

“Actually what they’re doing, is they’re burning it,” says Daling McMoran with the Poison Control Center. “The salt and the ice mixture will actually remove the heat from the body. It’s like a chemical reaction and it’s absorbing the heat and it’s lowering the temperature causing anywhere from frostbite to second degree burns.”

After just a few minutes holding the ice, the girls realized they had made a mistake.

“As we took it off, it turned white and it was really hard, the skin was hard,” says Duran.

“It was numb and then afterwards it hurt really badly, like you couldn’t move your hand,” says Brunson.

She ended up with a big blister on her hand, and had to admit what she’d done to her father.

“I never heard of it before and I was like that’s pretty stupid,” says Erickson. “Then I started thinking about some of the stupid stuff I did when I was a kid.”

He says he understands how strong peer pressure can be at her age. But he’s hoping she’ll think twice the next time someone brings up a potentially dangerous dare.

“As long as she learned her lesson, and she isn’t going to go out and try other things. Who knows what other things these kids are doing? There are all kinds of stupid stuff that’s out there, hopefully she’s learned her lesson from this small incident.”

Jenaea says she has learned, and she hopes other kids don’t make the mistake she did.

“I’m never going to do that again because it hurt really badly when the blister popped. I would say you shouldn’t do it, it’s stupid.”

kate bain

My 11yr old daughter and friends are doing what they call 1min ruler challenge and rubbing their school ruler back n forth on their wrist. Consiquently burning themselves not quite as bad as ice n salt but still nasty😞